Download Gender and the welfare state in China

Gender and the Welfare State in China
American Association of Chinese Studies (AACS) Annual Conference
Rollins College, 16-18 October 2009
Tonia Warnecke
Department of Economics, Rollins College
[email protected]
Abstract
In recent years, the scope of welfare state analysis—originally focused on
advanced, industrialized Western countries—has expanded to include
developing countries such as China. This paper investigates the evolution
of the Chinese welfare state from 1949 to the present day, incorporating a
gender perspective. Of particular interest is the evolution of welfare
mechanisms and their effects on gender-differentiated outcomes. The
paper therefore notes the ways that economic reform and welfare reform
interlink to affect women’s access to various welfare state benefits.
Gendered patterns in migration and informal labor, as well as the
structure of Chinese family policy (parental leave, child benefits, and
childcare provision), are also examined in this context.
Introduction
What is social welfare? What is a welfare state? What type of welfare state
(if any) do we need? The answers to these seemingly simple questions have been
fervently debated for the last couple of decades, and with the growing amount of
literature studying various welfare state regimes, it is even more important to
remember what lies at the heart of the analysis. Social welfare generally refers to
socioeconomic wellbeing. This is “correlated with the basic level of economic
development, of course, but focuses more specifically on a variety of goods and
services believed to be essential for individual and social happiness and security (such
as health care, housing, social insurance, other employment-related benefits, and
additional forms of social assistance)” (Warnecke 2008: 982). Together, the
institutions and policies supporting these types of goods and services form a welfarestate regime.
The welfare state defends and supports the development of social rights,
aiming “to make civil rights actually work…removing the barriers that blocked the
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full and equal exercise of civil and political rights” (Bussemaker and van Kersbergen
1999: 10). Supporting the idea of a welfare state can indicate a willingness to think
about prosperity and economic security as community goals (or even community
responsibilities), not merely individual ones. At the very least, it signifies an
acceptance that individuals, even hard-working ones, cannot always make things work
out well on their own—that they, too, might need help from the state in order to make
ends meet, in order to cope with unforeseen circumstances.
Reasons for instituting a welfare state range from the pragmatic (politicians
want to satisfy their electorate) to the economic (improving human capital can
improve economic growth) to the social (demonstrating that the state ‘cares’ can unify
the citizenry) (Goodin et al. 1999: 21). Visions of the ‘ideal’ welfare state also
change over time, as approaches to economic and political theory change, and as
conceptualizations of development change. At any given moment, however, the
precise make-up or composition of a welfare state—its priorities, its policies and its
eligibility requirements for benefits—heavily influence both the livelihoods and the
inequalities shaped by class, race and ethnicity, and gender (it is the latter which is the
focus of this paper).
In recent years, the scope of welfare state regime analysis—originally focused
on advanced, industrialized Western countries—has expanded to include less-studied
European regions (such as Southern and Eastern Europe), as well as newly
industrialized and developing countries in other regions. This paper discusses the
structure of the Chinese welfare state and its social policies, focusing on gender. The
structure of welfare regimes can have a major impact on gender (in)equality via
effects on labor force participation and outcomes, health and financial sustainability.
In this paper, I investigate the evolution of the Chinese welfare state from
1949 to the present day, incorporating a gender perspective. Of particular interest is
the evolution of welfare mechanisms and their effects on gender-differentiated
outcomes. The paper therefore notes the ways that economic reform and welfare
reform interlink to affect women’s access to various welfare state benefits. Gendered
patterns in migration and informal labor, as well as the structure of Chinese family
policy (parental leave, child benefits, and childcare provision), are also examined in
this context.
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Background: the Chinese welfare state
A sizable literature on welfare state regimes attempts to explain why countries
have different welfare policies, and which countries have ‘like’ welfare regimes
(Esping-Andersen 1990, 1999; Huber et al. 1993; Flaquer 2000). Reasons for the
diversity of welfare policies and welfare spending among different countries—
whether developed, developing, or a combination—include “external debt, capital
flows, and the relative power of labor,” particularities of a given region, and the
extent to which a country has undergone processes of modernization (Frazier 2006: 2;
see also Esping-Andersen 1990). Though these areas of research are interesting and
important, they are not the focus of this paper. Instead, the focus lies on the analysis
of one country—China—and how the structure and social policies of its welfare state
lead to gendered outcomes.
Before bringing gender into the analysis, it is important to first have an
understanding of where the Chinese welfare state is today, and from where it has
come. It is important to keep in mind, of course, that China is a developing country,
and as such, cannot be expected at this time to have a system of social protection
equivalent to that of an advanced, industrialized Anglo-American or European
country. Developing countries face many constraints to welfare state formation and
development, particularly spending constraints and the lack of a notion of broad-based
rights to welfare (Frazier 2006).
However, viewing China’s welfare state as ‘backward’ or ‘stagnant’ would be
incorrect, because China’s welfare state has undergone dramatic changes—some of
them progressive—in the past sixty years. In fact, one can distinguish between four
main phases of the welfare state: welfare during the command economy period (under
Mao) from 1949 to the late 1970s, the initial welfare reform period (under Deng
Xiaoping) in the 1980s, the more fundamental welfare reform period (under Jiang) in
the 1990s, and recent welfare state developments (in the last few years) pressing for a
more inclusive approach.
During the command economy period, welfare provision was “comprehensive
and universalist, resulting in a relatively high level of social development in terms of
e.g. life expectancy and literacy rates, for a low income country” (MacDermott and
Kwon 2003: 19). As Guan (2000: 4) explains, the system was based on a socialist
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ideology, and the state—not the individual—was therefore responsible for ensuring
“equality, social justice, and collective action in economic and social life.” The
government took full financial responsibility for providing welfare, via the enterprises
it controlled (Guan 2000). The key element of the welfare system during this period
was the right to employment (usually for life) in an appointed position; this ensured
income security for the masses. There were other benefits as well: housing,
education, health care, and pensions—but not all individuals received these benefits,
and not all recipients enjoyed similar benefit levels. However, salary and benefits
were largely planned together and offered together to the relevant worker groups, to
compensate them for the relatively low base pay of the socialist system.
Chinese welfare provision during the command economy era is often
described by a three tiered system. Receiving the highest levels of benefits were civil
servants and Communist Party officials; the next highest benefit levels were received
by state sector workers in urban areas. The lowest benefit levels, however, went to
those in rural areas, who “relied on their collectives for minimal medical care and
educational resources” (Frazier 2006: 5). Rural Chinese mostly depended on family
networks for social provision, and received no pensions or housing from the state.
However, I would argue that a four tiered system may be a more accurate
representation. This is because the above-mentioned middle tier (state sector
workers) can actually be further divided into two groups: permanent state workers (or
workers in state-owned enterprises, SOEs, with urban household registration), and
workers in urban collectives. Lee (2005: 1) explains that these urban collectives were
“enterprises that were initially set up by local government bureaus to absorb
unemployed personnel or provide employment for state-dependent workers. Some
were subsidiaries of state-owned firms catering to the latter’s production needs.”
Since the SOEs produced a much higher proportion (75%) of total industrial output,
and were protected by the state budget (while subsidiaries were not), one could argue
that the benefits for SOE workers were more secure. Certainly, benefits in the
collectives depended on the profitability of the enterprise, and were always less
generous (Davin 2001). Thus, a four-tiered system would explain the distribution of
welfare benefits according to the following order (from most to least
generous/secure): (1) civil servants and Communist Party officials, (2) permanent
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(SOE) state workers in urban areas, (3) workers in urban collectives, and (4) those in
rural areas.
The existence of this tiered system is significant in that it shows the discord
between the socialist ideology of comprehensive welfare and the reality of a limited
budget for such provisions, along with the low efficiency associated with the centrally
planned system (which cast doubt on benefit sustainability). This discord was a
catalyst for the economic reforms in the 1970s, which emphasized increased
marketization and trade liberalization (MacDermott and Kwon 2003: 19).
The economic reforms of the 1970s, which increased the country’s marketorientation, led to the second phase of the Chinese welfare state—the initial welfare
reform. Interestingly, common themes of this phase of reform in China—that
“emerging inequalities were tolerated as a temporary negative by-product” and that
“everyone would benefit from economic growth in the long run” (Stepan 2008: 26)—
are common themes from neoclassical economic theory. This is not so surprising, of
course, given that neoclassical economists in the West, bolstered by the newly
conservative political economy of Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in
the UK, were in a full-court press around the world for precisely the types of
economic reforms that China had been undertaking. In this first stage of reform, then,
China was following some of the same strategies as capitalist, democratic economies
in the West: defining economic development in terms of growth (rather than a more
holistic conceptualization of development as ‘human development’ or ‘equitable
development’).
The initial welfare reform focused mostly on fixing the ‘institutional
dysfunctions caused by the economic reform” (MacDermott and Kwon 2003: 19).
Prior to welfare reform, the state had been in charge of funding the benefit system.
However, the economic reform transformed state-owned enterprises into independent
businesses; the state was no longer responsible for reimbursing firms for benefit
expenses, and many firms did not believe they would be able to continue offering
pension and health benefits. Experiments with pooling systems and free medical care
were tried in some instances (Guan 2000: 5). In general, the initial economic reform
resulted in a pull-back of the state from financing welfare.
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The 1990s, however, represented a more fundamental period of welfare
reform, solidifying the neoliberal trends of benefit privatization and marketization,
and a reduced financial role for the state. This period of reform coincided with an
effort to develop a real ‘Chinese’ welfare state based on established goals, rather than
responding piecemeal to difficulties created for the welfare system by the economic
reforms of the 1970s (Guan 2000). During this period, the state moved most benefit
schemes in China from non-contributory to contributory status. In other words, many
welfare benefits—particularly pensions and health care—became the financial
responsibility of individuals and firms. Not all groups of workers were covered.
Furthermore, increased marketization meant that prices increased for benefits, goods
and services as government price ceilings and rationing schemes were eliminated.
The most fundamental welfare change during this period, though, was the end of the
full-employment policy with lifetime employment guarantee. Instead, a new contract
labor system emerged, signifying the risk of being laid-off while also providing
certain unemployment benefits (again, such benefits usually were targeted at the
urban sector).
The welfare reforms of the 1990s left China in between a ‘private welfare’
model and a ‘state welfare’ model. According to Guan (2000: 11),
“Although there are some similarities between the welfare societalization in
China and welfare privatization in some other developing countries, a
fundamental difference is that in China most of the welfare institutions are still
kept public owned as far as their property rights are concerned. Under the
current situation, the non-governmental sector is still very weak and lacks the
institutional infrastructure to achieve a thoroughly private welfare model.
Government allows and even encourages non-governmental actors to
participate in its traditional fields of activity, just because it hopes that
financial responsibilities will thus be shared and welfare activities will become
more efficient.”
One legacy of the command economy model, a weak private sector, has therefore
made it difficult for China to develop a true ‘private welfare’ model, as it was pushing
towards in the 1990s. Interestingly, though, in recent years the Chinese government
seems to be questioning whether the ‘private welfare’ model is the right path for
China after all.
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As we move farther into the new century, China has undergone some changes
in thinking about its welfare state. The fourth phase of the welfare state—which only
recently has begun—coincides with a growing realization (both national and
international) of the increasing inequality within the country, which has been
associated with the earlier reforms (of both the economy and the welfare system).
This has called into question the previously held belief that economic growth is the
most important development goal, and is one reason why a panel of 208 Chinese
experts recently claimed that “China is likely to become a welfare state in the next 40
years,” with universal medical care, old age pensions, and minimum living allowances
for all urban and rural residents (China View 2008). The government has made some
concrete steps to achieve ‘growth with equity’ and reduce the rural-urban gap, such as
a new cooperative health care program (established in 2003) for rural residents; the
scheme “now covers 91% of total farmers and 98% of rural areas” (China View
2008). In addition, a rural minimum living allowance system (for all provinces,
autonomous regions and municipalities in China) was formally established in 2007
(Ibid.).
Some scholars are quite optimistic about these changes; for example, Stepan
(2008: 28) argues that the idea of a “harmonious socialist society” (the new idea of
the Chinese welfare state of the future) “shows more similarities with the paradigm of
the EU social policy...than with any of the established [welfare] regime types.” Other
scholars, such as Frazier (2006), are much less optimistic, noting that the high benefit
coverage rates presented by the state are attained by excluding many groups—migrant
labor, small entrepreneurs, laid-off workers, and informal sector workers—from
official statistics. According to Frazier (2006: 8), the actual coverage rate (calculated
by dividing the number of eligible workers by the labor force of a given locality) is
“usually about 50% for pensions, and lower...for medical insurance.”
Therefore, the new benefit schemes are considerably less effective than they
may appear, and there is a significant chasm between the ‘face’ of China’s welfare
state and how it actually functions. Furthermore, the cooptation of the sole legal
union in China (the All China Federation of Trade Unions, ACFTU) by the state has
strongly tilted “the balance of power further toward the employers” (Lee 2005: 18),
giving employees less recourse for defending and maintaining their rights and
benefits. A ‘wait-and-see’ approach is likely in order here, since the state’s recent
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change in perspective on the welfare state is too new to assess properly at this point in
time.
The evolution of the Chinese welfare state from a gender perspective
While the four-tiered system of welfare provision (discussed above) is helpful
to distinguish among rural and urban benefits, and benefits accorded to different
worker groups, it is less helpful for understanding how China’s welfare state relates to
gender. Yet this occurs in many ways. For one thing, the structure of a welfare state
influences labor force participation and labor force outcomes for both men and
women. Furthermore, if the welfare system relies heavily on the family as welfare
provider (instead of the state), this is likely to unduly burden women of the household
– especially given socio-cultural norms which assume that females undertake the
majority of unpaid labor around the house. A “culture of paternalism is bound to
influence two crucial things: the way that development agendas unfold, and the way
that social welfare policies are structured” (Warnecke and DeRuyter 2008: 3).
Paternalism is “a system under which an authority undertakes to supply needs
or regulate conduct of those under its control in matters affecting them as individuals
as well as in their relations to authority and to each other” (Merriam-Webster 2008).
Paternalism has often been taken to mean ‘behaving like a father’ or ‘treating
someone like a child’ (Suber 1999). It implies the existence of a hierarchy (or
hierarchies) of power. Although this means that the concept of paternalism is easily
applied to the state-citizenry relationship in various political systems, feminist
literature focuses on power hierarchies among men and women—linking paternalism
to inequities within the household. This casts the global emphasis today on paid (and
to a lesser degree, formal) work in a whole new light, given that development is often
conceptualized in terms of GDP growth—and national income accounting (which
calculates GDP figures) does not include the category of unpaid labor. Furthermore,
socio-cultural and gender norms are bound to affect the way that social welfare
policies, including family policies, are structured.
Though the perception of communism as a viable alternative to capitalism has
largely been derided since the fall of the Soviet Union, a gender perspective would
note that communist societies could have better women’s rights than capitalist
societies do, at least in theory (Rapley 2007). In communist systems, employment
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guarantees apply to women as well as men, as do other welfare benefits; there is a
universal approach. Furthermore, certain benefits were provided more consistently
during the command economy period in China (as compared to today), such as paid
maternity leave for all state employees (Davin 2001). However, gender still
influenced welfare provision and labor market outcomes during this period.
Recall that in the command economy era, there were two main groups of
urban workers (excluding the Communist Party officials and civil servants): the
permanent state employees working in SOEs, and those working in urban collectives
and SOE subsidiaries. While the permanent state workers received more stable
benefits, women constituted only 32% of this group. In contrast, women comprised
57% of those working in urban collectives or SOE subsidiaries (Lee 2005).
According to Lee (2005: 2),
“Gender inequalities...were manifested in pay disparity, occupational and job
segregation, and welfare gaps, despite state efforts to increase women’s labor
force participation rates. On the eve of reform, women’s average wage was 83
per cent that of men’s; the male-female ratio of Communist Party membership
was 2:1 and male-headed households were given priority in terms of welfare
housing allocations.”
Even though ‘universalist’ thinking about welfare did not lead to gender-equitable
outcomes during Mao’s leadership, after the command economy period, the situation
actually worsened in many policy areas. This can largely be attributed to the genderbiased customs and legislation carried over from the command economy era,
combined with the consequences of the ‘growth before equity’ strategy of the first
two rounds of welfare reform.
For example, the gendered allocation of housing during Mao’s reign still
undermines women’s ability to own their own homes today (Lee 2005; Davin 2001).
Another carry-over from the command economy period is the lower mandated
retirement age for women; women were (and are still) required to retire at age 55,
while the retirement age for men is 60 years of age. This means that men are able to
build up more tenure in a position, gain more seniority, and ultimately receive a much
higher pension than Chinese women—since pensions are “calculated as a proportion
of final salary” (Davin 2001: 6).
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The welfare reforms of the 1980s and 1990s also led to gendered outcomes
because of the switch away from a (theoretically) ‘universalist’ approach to welfare
provision. The new individualist approach means that benefits are generally
connected to one’s status as a worker, not as a citizen. However, these welfare
reforms coincided with an increasing gender wage gap in China; by 1999, women’s
average wage had fallen to 70 per cent that of men’s (World Bank 2002).1 This
would be expected to lead to gender gaps in benefit provision for employed women
and men. However, the individualist approach also creates problems for women who
may not work (for any reason); such women must then rely on their husbands for
benefits—fostering a position of dependency (Warnecke 2008).2 The fact that women
are still largely viewed to be secondary income earners within a male breadwinner
household, (and thus women’s career opportunities are not taken as seriously as those
of men), exacerbates these problems (Liu 2007: 128-30).
Today, the dependency of females on their husbands (and other male relatives)
for benefits and social protection also applies to land ownership in China. In the
command economy period, rural residents were able to stay on and work a specified
plot of land for a period of time—first 3 years and then 15. During the reforms of the
1980s, however, the 1988 Revised Land Administration Law specified that “land is
contracted for 30 years with no adjustments” (Lee 2005: 28). While allowing for
longer tenure sounds good in theory, there are gender implications.
By restricting all adjustments to land ownership, women now have trouble
gaining rights to a plot of land for which ownership should rightfully be adjusted due
to the death of a male relative (Li and Bruce 2005: 323). In “the absence of detailed
instructions ensuring women’s rights, local communities routinely deprive women of
access and rights to land” in these situations (Li and Bruce 2005: 322). The problem
is exacerbated by the post-command economy custom of titling land to the male head
of household (not to both man and wife). Therefore, social and cultural norms govern
land ownership as much as national laws do.
1
The increasing reliance on temporary positions and informal labor in China (and the socio-cultural
norms allocating these ‘worse jobs’ to women) can help to explain this outcome. This will be
discussed further in the next section.
2
Of course, single mothers face the most challenges in this type of system.
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Gendered patterns of migration, informal employment and welfare state benefits
Gender-differentiated welfare outcomes can also be linked to changing
patterns of migration and the growing incidence of informal labor in China (both are
associated with the previous economic reforms). As previously mentioned, coverage
ratios for benefits in China exclude several categories of workers, yet women
constitute a significant proportion of some of these categories—particularly migrant
workers and informal workers. Although the number of migrants in any country is
notoriously difficult to measure, many scholars estimate that migration within China
is becoming increasingly feminized. In fact, “recently the rate of increase of female
out-migration surpassed that of males, although the absolute number of male migrants
still exceeds that of females” (World Bank 2002: 15). While in 2000 47.5% of all
migrant workers were thought to be women, in certain regions female migrants vastly
outnumber male migrants; in Shenzhen, women account for 65.6% of all migrants
(Lee 2005: 5).
China’s increase in female migration can partially be attributed to the large—
and growing—role of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which are export-processing
zones. Export processing zones commonly prefer to hire women due to longstanding
stereotypes of their nimble fingers and docile nature (Churchill 2004); about 80% of
SEZ workers in China are women (Knox 1997). By contributing to economic growth,
export processing zones are entitled to several government concessions, including
evasion of wage and labor laws (Engman et al. 2007). In terms of welfare benefits,
however, Davin (2001: 7) argues that “migrants tend not to be covered at all;” most
SEZ workers are temporary workers, and only ‘permanent’ workers (most of whom
are not migrants because they have grown up in the SEZ area) receive benefits.
Another phenomenon to consider here is the high incidence of informal
employment in China. While informal employment is widely associated with low
wages and poor working conditions, it also poses problems for women’s ability to
access benefits of the welfare state. In 2004, nearly 60% of urban employment was
informal employment (employment outside the state and private sectors); this
represents a dramatic increase from just over 20% in 1994 (Li and Kumar 2007).
There is currently no institutionalization of welfare benefits for informal workers in
China, which disproportionately harms women since they constitute a large
proportion of workers in China’s informal sector (Cooke 2005).
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So far, we have seen that the combination of economic reform and welfare
reform has led to a situation where women are disproportionately disadvantaged by
the structure of China’s welfare state. Now, a special focus on one aspect of social
protection—family policy—will provide some additional insight regarding the impact
of China’s welfare state on women’s labor force outcomes.
Family Policy in China
A welfare state’s family policies—maternal/parental leave, child benefits, and
childcare provision—greatly influence female labor force participation by either
promoting or discouraging the employment of mothers (Warnecke 2008). Studies
show that parental leaves shorter than 20 weeks increase female participation, while
longer parental leaves decrease the probability of a mother returning to work;
likewise, childcare subsidies boost female participation, but child benefits reduce it
(Jaumotte 2003: 1,8).3 Therefore, it is the combination of family policies which
matters. If policymakers adhere to traditional conceptions of the gender division of
labor, little state assistance may be given to enable women to balance work with
family life. This essentially forces women to choose between working outside the
home and raising a family.4
Parental leave
Despite Chinese Labour Law provisions for 90 days of paid maternity leave
(Bowen et al. 2007: 272); there do not appear to be any effective means of sanctioning
such regulations to promote paid maternity leave in China (Nielsen et al. 2005: 360).
In fact, external audits of various manufacturing companies have noted several
violations of these provisions—for example, providing maternity leave only to
management staff (MIMCO 2000). Even though Article 26 of the Law of the People's
Republic of China on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women states, “No
3
This apparent contradiction can be explained in neoclassical economics by the income and
substitution effects. The income effect is exemplified by the child benefit. This benefit (a cash
transfer) increases the household income level, which increases demand for all normal goods—
including nonmarket goods (e.g., leisure time). To satisfy the demand for nonmarket goods, fewer
labor hours are supplied to the market. (Free time becomes more affordable.) In contrast, childcare
subsidies reduce the price of childcare. Since childcare costs are essentially a tax on market earnings,
the subsidy acts to increase the real wage. By raising the rate of return to market labor, market labor
becomes more attractive—causing women to substitute market work for nonmarket work.
4
The female economic activity rate in China has fallen for the last 15 years; the 2008 rate was 70.4 %
(ILO 2008, http://laborsta.ilo.org). During this period, the male economic activity rate has consistently
been 10-15% higher than the female rate.
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unit may dismiss woman staff and workers or unilaterally terminate labor contracts
with them by reason of marriage, pregnancy, maternity leave or baby-nursing,” there
is evidence to suggest that women are increasingly pressured to defer marriage and
childbirth in order to retain their jobs (China Daily 2006). Due to the lack of labor
law enforcement, when women (particularly rural migrant women) become pregnant
it is simply easier to substitute them with replacement workers rather than pay them
maternity leave (Nielsen et al. 2005: 360). Such trends reinforce the (involuntary)
decision to either work or bear children, but not combine the two.
Child benefits
Evidence suggests similar ingrained obstacles to the provision of child
benefits, given the erosion of the social support system in the transition to a market
economy. Because of governmental control over family planning, it is difficult to
compare child benefits in China with those in other countries. It is true that in some
provinces (Southwest China’s Yunnan province, for example), families who sign an
agreement to have only one child do receive a cash benefit of 1,000 yuan—
approximately $146 USD (China Daily 2004). The rewards for adhering to the ‘one
child’ policy are not limited to cash; they “include an exemption of education fees,
additions to their child's scores in college entrance exams and advantages towards
additional education” (Ibid.; see also Bowen et al. 2007).
Instead of focusing on such child benefits, one could, however, also refer to
‘child penalties’ to families violating the ‘one child’ policy. For example, social
fostering or maintenance fees, often called ‘family planning fines’ in the West, are
imposed on families who have more than one child if they were not approved to do
so. In Beijing, fines are based upon the average per capita income—and are usually
between three to eight times that figure (Gilbert 2009). Such fines can easily cripple a
family for life. In Guangxi, police had “frozen the bank accounts of alleged violators
[of the one child policy] and given them an ultimatum of paying up or having their
life savings confiscated” (Ni 2007). Put in this context, child benefits and child
penalties in China are intended to illustrate government control over fertility and
childbearing decisions. As such, the ways that family allowances could affect female
labor force participation have not entered the equation.
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Childcare provision
Theoretically, the “one child” policy could affect childcare provision in
various ways. On one level, it would be expected to ease the demand for childcare
provision, as family sizes shrank. However, on another level it could be argued that
this policy only serves to reinforce attitudes that the problems women face in family
duties are somehow minimal compared to women in other countries and hence that
childcare support measures should be minimal,5 reinforcing the traditional Confucian
bias against women (Bowen et al. 2007).
Keeping this in mind, it should not be surprising that China lacks a specified
governmental framework for child care. The child protection agencies are often
affiliated to non-governmental organizations, but “without an integrative and
specified government administration in child care work, the state cannot efficiently
supervise and regulate public (primarily affiliated to working units or schools) or
private child care. Moreover, given its weak administrative basis, the financing of
child care and child service is vulnerable” (Gao 2009: 12). Therefore, a significant
portion of child care in China is provided on an unpaid basis by relatives. In fact,
Kilburn and Datar (2002: 7) estimate that 29% of families using child care in China
do not pay for it.
While paid child care is heavily subsidized by the state, these subsidies are not
available to all families. Usually the subsidies are targeted at public sector
(government) workers and workers in state-owned enterprises (Gao 2009). In contrast
to many Western industrial nations, however, where women are disproportionately
represented in public sector jobs, in China more women work for non-governmental
or non-state-owned enterprises—and thus are less likely to receive any child care
assistance (Gao 2009: 13). This creates wide gaps between households that receive
child care subsidies—who spend only about 0.4% of their income on the service
(Kilburn and Datar 2002: 7)—and households that do not.
Nonetheless, overall child care availability is still quite limited in China, with
only 1 in 4 children in urban areas (and 1 in 7 children in rural areas) living in a
community with some type of child care center (Kilburn and Datar 2002). Even more
See Clancy, M. and Tata, J. “A Global Perspective on Balancing Work and Family”, at
http://www.midwestacademy.org/Proceedings/2005/papers/Clancy%20and%20Tata%20%20revision.doc
5
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telling, however, is the take-up rate for child care. Analyzing four waves of
longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, Kilburn and Datar
(2002) examine the child care take-up rate for the 0 to 5 age group. They find that in
urban areas, 16 percent of children receive care at child care centers, compared to
only 3 percent of children in rural areas. This poses a significant problem for mothers
trying to engage in waged work outside the home.
Conclusion
During the command economy era in China, the ‘universalist’ theory of
welfare provision did not translate into universal benefits for all groups of people.
Though many divisions existed in terms of benefit levels and access (including
divisions based on residence and place of work), it is still important to note cultural
and institutional biases against women during this period. Despite the shift to a
market economy and rapid economic growth, these gender biases remain in China.
The economic reforms worsened gender wage gaps and led to the societal
marginalization of migrants and informal workers, many of whom were (and still are)
women unable to access welfare state benefits. Furthermore, family policies (an
important aspect of any welfare state) are not structured in a way that can support
simultaneous labor force participation and childbearing for women. Thus, China can
still be considered as paternalist and patriarchal in its approach to development and
welfare provision. It is true, of course, that China has embraced a new ‘face’ of the
welfare state, in response to public and international outcry regarding its rising
inequality. While this could result in significant change (for all Chinese, including
women), not enough time has passed for the country to demonstrate what this
‘Chinese socialist welfare state’ will look like.
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